


A Little Priest

by TubularFox



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - The Food Network, Author Watches Too Much Chopped, Hannibal Lecter Loves Will Graham, Hannibal Lecter is a Cannibal, M/M, Will Graham Loves Hannibal Lecter, Will Graham is a Cannibal, reluctantly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-16
Updated: 2020-01-16
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:26:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22276312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TubularFox/pseuds/TubularFox
Summary: Does something smell fishy to you?  On today's episode of Chopped, four home cooks must make an appetizer, entree, and dessert with mystery baskets that all contain a finned surprise!  Who will escape the judges' nets, and who will end up Chopped?
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 20
Kudos: 166
Collections: 2019 Eat The Rude Secret Santa





	A Little Priest

**Author's Note:**

  * For [zombieutopia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zombieutopia/gifts).



> Ah, sorry I'm late! I had about sixty million ideas running around in my head for what to write, so naturally none of them ever got beyond the first three paragraphs. But I hope you enjoy!

“And, joining the judges’ table today is Will Graham. Now, Will, I hear congratulations are in order! Your third first-place individual finish at the World Fly Fishing Championship in a _row_. That’s pretty impressive!”

Will smiles. “Thanks, Jimmy. Yeah, it was a stiff competition this year—not that it isn’t _every_ year. But with half the usual members unable to make it this year, and with Chiyoh back in rotation…” He shakes his head. “But yeah, I had a good time. Glad to be back in the States.”

Jimmy Price smiles and adjusts his suit jacket, glancing at the sound crew. “Sound levels good? Mics? We all set to go?”

Zeller pulls one headphone away from his ear and nods. “Yeah, we’re getting you both clearly. Levels are good.” He puts his headset to rights and fixes his mic. “Okay, we’re good to go. Let’s get the contestants in here. Camera One, you ready?”

When Price gets the all-clear, he looks for his marker. “These four home cooks might think of themselves as big fish in small ponds, but when things start to heat up in the kitchen, who will go with the flow, and who will find themselves in hot water?”

Will is glad the camera isn’t on him as he listens to Price say the same intro line a few times, until he gets the inflection and timing just right—after all, Will’s pretty sure “unimpressed exasperation” isn’t exactly the mood the writers were going for.

Price continues. “First up, we have Garret Jacob Hobbs.” He pauses, waits. He will introduce all the contestants before they come in, to give the camera crew the space to film the entrances as many times as they need to. “Next up is Franklyn Froideveaux!” Price frowns and touches his bowtie. “‘Froideveaux,’ did I say that right?”

“How the hell should I know,” says Zeller. “Do we need to ask him again? Hey, can somebody get Franklyn and double-check his last name?”

Price clears his throat as the PA runs off to do so. “Right, in the interest of time…” He straightens. “Our third home cook is Anthony Dimmond.”

The PA rushes back over to Zeller, who pulls a headphone off to listen, then nods. “Jimmy, you’re good on Froideveaux.”

Price gives a thumbs up, then puts his ‘serious’ face back on. “Last but not least, Hannibal Lecter! These home cooks may all have the drive, but who will come out on top? And who… will be _chopped?_ ”

Honestly, Will’s sure he must have heard Price wrong. Or—or there’s another really talented home cook named Hannibal Lecter. That’s got to be it, right? The only explanation. It can’t _actually_ be—

But of course, Will has never been lucky in his life. The first cook is a weedy, slightly wild-eyed guy with a receding hairline and scruff. The second is a portly, kind of hapless-looking man with curly hair and a beard. The third is more classically handsome, with neat, silvering hair and a little bit of a goatee. The next person to come out, though, puts Dimmond’s aesthetics to shame.

Even hearing the sharp tap of the familiar stride down the hall is enough to set Will’s heart pounding. And, sure enough, who should emerge through the branded glass doors but Hannibal Augustinas Lecter, M.D., Ph.D., Maryland Dancesport Champion six years in a row, five-star equivalent home chef, and the bane of Will’s existence.

He looks _so_ sharp in his black chef’s coat.

Price takes the four contestants on a tour of the pantry, letting them familiarize themselves with the contents. Froideveaux seems to want to be everyone’s friend—especially Hannibal’s—constantly chatting away about this and that. Mostly about how he hopes cheese is in the basket. Hannibal largely ignores him, looking everything over with a quiet focus. He makes an occasional exception to smile at something Dimmond says when he leans in close, puts his mouth next to Hannibal’s ear and—

And Will doesn’t care. He just wants them to start cooking already. The sooner they do, the sooner Will can go home.

Finally, the contestants take their places at their stations. The ovens are preheated, the pots of water are happily boiling, and Price tells them the rules: three rounds, four mystery ingredients, and at the end, one winner of $10,000 for the charity of his choice. Get ready for the appetizer round, home cooks, time to open your baskets.

They do that take a few times, letting the camera crew get the right angles on all of the chefs as they open the baskets and make appropriate faces of confusion and dismay at the (cloth-covered) ingredients inside.

Finally, they’re allowed to open the baskets for real.

Price positions himself at the end of the row, his hands folded in front of him. “Let’s see what you can make with fresh sardines, rice cakes, dulse, and wax beans! Twenty minutes on the clock, home chefs. And your time… starts… now!”

The contestants burst into a flurry of motion, opening jars, running into the pantry to gather their extra ingredients… Price wanders over to the judges table to introduce the panel and get their insights on the basket’s mystery ingredients, but Will isn’t paying him any attention at all, too distracted by the melody of Hannibal’s precise accent telling the other cooks, “Behind, behind.”

“—new cookbook out, which is already earning _rave_ reviews,” says Frederick Chilton, Will’s co-judge and least favorite person in the world. Well, aside from Bedelia du Maurier. And— _ugh_ —Mason Verger. Will is _very_ glad that this episode has _nothing_ to do with the pork industry, because no matter how much he was threatened and/or cajoled by his agent, Jack Crawford, Will refuses to be within a hundred yards of Mason Verger.

For Mason Verger’s own safety.

Which is something _other people_ might care about. Like his father’s attorney. Or, you know, the police. The studio execs might not like it too much if one of their judges tried to bite the head off another, _literally._ Will can’t really explain it; Mason Verger’s presence just makes him want to commit homicide.

He’s gotten lost in his thoughts again—he completely missed Price’s introduction of Alana Bloom, a pioneer of cooking therapy at a sanctuary for victims of trauma. She also has a few cookbooks out—the latest one, if Will remembers, is _Stressed Desserts._ Like Chilton’s cookbook, it’s getting nothing but good reviews. Unlike Chilton’s cookbook, it deserves them.

Price turns his million-watt smile on Will, and Will finds himself returning it, on battery-saver brightness.

“And last but not least, our wonderful guest judge! Will Graham, Best-Selling True Crime Novelist and three-time World Fly-Fishing champion! And you know, I don’t think I’ve ever said a weirder sentence!”

Will laughs. “Knowing you, Jimmy, I’m sure you have.”

They actually met at one of Will’s book signings a few years ago, when Will released his book on the _Sandbox Butcher_ , a man responsible for the brutal killing of four children under the age of ten, whose bodies he had left on different playgrounds in rural New York. His book had actually led to the killer’s arrest. Will was glad of that, of course, but he could have done without the press tour. He did _not_ enjoy the company of the people such events attracted—usually a 75/25 split between self-designated “serial killer aficionados” and police officers who remembered seeing Will’s name in the news in relation to _another_ killer, one whose crimes Will had been accused of and arrested for.

And also _acquitted_ of.

However, Will isn’t here in his capacity as a true-crime writer, even though his last novel is about the cannibalistic Chesapeake Ripper. No, Will is here because today’s mystery basket theme is _fish_.

He’s not really sure why _Hannibal_ is here.

“Are you excited for our fish-themed challenges this episode?” Price asks, leaning his elbow on the table next to Will. “What would you say you’ve done more of—catching fish or eating them?”

Will takes a moment to think about it. “Eating, I’d say. I’ve eaten a lot of fish I didn’t catch, but aside from when I’m on the competition circuit, I eat everything I get my hook into.”

At his station, Hannibal snorts. Or maybe it’s a cough. It’s not like Will was listening for it.

Price nods like Will has said something wise. “Speaking of eating, let’s check in on what our contestants are making. Home cooks, you have ten minutes left! Ten minutes!”

Will sits up a little more in his chair, so he can see the arena a little better. At the far end, Hobbs is putting his sardines in the fryer, but he didn’t use enough of a binder in the rice-cake crust and it’s all flaking off. Will thins his lips. 

“He needs to take those out of the fryer or they’re going to be cooked to death. It doesn’t take that long to cook sardines.”

“Yeah,” Alana agrees, “it’s going to be _really_ dry.”

“It’s not something you can really hide with a sauce, either,” says Will. “If you give someone overcooked fish—they know. They know.”

“Interesting what Lecter is doing with _his_ sardines,” Chilton says, gesturing to where Hannibal is checking on his cast-iron pan in the oven. “Baking them with lemon, crusted in the rice cakes.”

“I’m more interested in his dulse, white wine, cream sauce,” says Alana.

“Speaking of which,” Price interrupts, “what exactly _is_ dulse? It looks kind of like…bacon?”

“Funny you should say that,” Will says, before Chilton can. The man closes his mouth with a petulant sniff. “Dulse is seaweed, usually big in northern European diets. Highly nutritional. And when you cook it, it actually _does_ taste a lot like bacon.”

They watch Hannibal taste his sauce. He considers his flavors, then adds a little more salt and some fresh parsley. On the station beside his, Dimmond is making a play on a crab cake, and currently he’s doing a quick pickle on his wax beans to make a tartar sauce. Froideveaux, as far as Will can tell, is making a salad with roasted sardines on top and rice-cake croutons. Largely, it would seem, because he _really_ wants to put cheese in his dish somewhere and Caesar salad is one of the only places where cheese and fish are _easy_ to pair together.

“Five minutes! Five minutes on the clock!” Price calls out.

Hannibal has already blanched his wax beans, so he starts arranging them on his plates in anticipation of his fish. It’s going to be tight—it takes about fifteen minutes to bake sardines, and while Hannibal got them in pretty quickly, the clock isn’t going to leave him much wiggle room.

As the clock ticks down, the contestants all rush to get their four plates completed. Hobbs is dicing his beans, when all of a sudden—

“ _Fuck_. Medic! I need a medic!”

Even with one hand in the air, blood streaming down from his finger, Hobbs isn’t ready to give up. He makes sure the bloody knife is well away from the food and continues to plate his dish one-handed.

“Get everything on the plate!” Alana yells. “It doesn’t have to look nice, but if it’s not on the plate we can’t taste it!”

“Good Lord, he’s bleeding all over the kitchen,” Chilton says.

Froideveaux is shaving his cheese, Dimmond is carefully arranging his cakes on a bed of lettuce, and Hannibal is… calmly wiping a stray drop of sauce from the edge of his plate.

“Ten seconds, cooks! Nine, eight, seven—” Price counts down with the clock, and five seconds, Froideveaux realizes he forgot to put his paprika-tossed wax beans on the plate, so he frantically grabs a spoon to shovel them onto each plate.

“Time! Hands up, everyone, step away from your plates!”

Everyone looks down at what they’ve made, and Dimmond gives the relief-deflated Froideveaux a kind smile. “That was a close one, I’d say! Glad you got everything on there.” The Dimmond turns to look at Hannibal’s plate. “ _Wow_. That looks…”

Hannibal smiles, wielding his smooth charm with expert precision. “Yours looks very tasty as well, Anthony. As we eat first with our eyes, your offering is certainly a feast.”

Dimmond actually flushes a little, and Will fights to urge to roll his eyes. Contain yourself. _Please_.

There’s a short pause while the cameras are rearranged and Hobbs’ finger is bandaged, then the four contestants make their way to stand in a line in front of the judges’ table.

Franklyn Froideveux, an actuary from Baltimore, Maryland by day, is up first. “Thanks so much for having me here today! Man, I never thought I’d ever be on a show like this. Today I’ve made for you a Caesar salad, with smoked sardines and rice-cake croutons.”

The judges taste the dish. Will dips his fork in the dressing and tastes it on its own. Not a bad flavor, actually, though on the whole the salad is a little over-dressed.

“I really like your use of the lemon and the paprika on the beans,” Alana says. “It’s a nice, bright flavor, and it cuts through the creaminess of the dressing nicely. So it’s a good thing you got them on the plate.”

“Yeah, whew, I would have been in a pretty tough spot if I’d left them off!” Froideveaux rings his hands a little nervously.

“The smoke on the sardine is also pretty well-handled,” Chilton allows. “I would have wanted just a little _more_ smoke, but I can taste it.”

“All in all, a good dish,” Will agrees, and he supposes he’s just going to have to live with the fact that he’s going to spend a large portion of the next ten hours of filming having to be seen to _agree_ with _Frederick Chilton_. But there’s no way around it. “The dulse in the dressing gives it same kind of rich note that the anchovies usually bring, so I’m not actually missing them in this salad.”

“You usually have the anchovies on your Caesar salad?” Alana asks.

“Of course,” Will answers. “When properly prepared, anchovies are very good, and not the overpowering mess they are when mishandled.” He staunchly pretends he can’t see Hannibal smiling out of the corner of his eye. “Anyway, yeah. Good. A little over-dressed, so your croutons are getting a little soft, but overall, a solid appetizer.”

Froideveaux looks like he could _fly._

“So, why subject yourself to all this? What charity are you competing for?” Price asks.

“My charity is the Maryland Youth Arts Program,” Froideveaux replies. “There are a lot of kids whose families can’t afford to get them music lessons, or drama classes, and—well, I’m a big fan of the opera, so, I really just feel like it’s something people should get to grow up doing, you know?”

“That sounds like a great cause,” Price agrees. “Thank you for coming today and raising awareness of it. Next up, Mr. Garret Jacob Hobbs.”

Hobbs, a Minnesota construction worker, nods. “So today I made you a breaded, fried sardine with a wax bean and dulse slaw.”

Will nods and cuts into the sardine. “Yeah, I thought so. This fish has been overcooked. You can see in there? _Very_ dry.” He takes a bite, chews it over. “The crust isn’t too bad. Would have been better if it stayed on the fish more when it was being cooked, but your oil temperature was high enough that it’s not too greasy.”

Chilton and Alana voiced similar sentiments, with Alana adding in that she liked the slaw a lot.

“I’m here playing for Hunters Feed the Hungry,” Hobbs says when prompted by Price. “My daughter and I go deer hunting a lot, it’s something we do together as a family. While we butcher our own meat, Hunters Feed the Hungry is an organization that processes hunters’ kills for a cut of the meat, which they donate to local soup kitchens and food banks. They also do the processing for deer that are illegally caught or those killed in deer strikes.”

Hannibal hums. “That is a worthy thing to support indeed. Good to know it won’t go to waste.”

“ _Exactly_.”

“Well, I’m sure they’re glad you’re here spreading the word.” Price smiles, then turns his attention to Dimmond. “What have you prepared for the judges today, Mr. Anthony Dimmond?”

Anthony Dimmond is a poet, originally from England, and it shows in his eloquent description of his sardine cakes with dulse-pickled wax bean tartar sauce. Hannibal is nodding along, which sours Wills mood a little toward Mr. Dimmond, but he was told ahead of time that he should judge the food on its merits, not based on any kind of personal… biases.

“It’s under-seasoned,” Will says, bluntly. And because he then deems it wise not to say anything else that might tip his hand any more to the smug bastard at the end of the line, he lets Chilton and Alana round out the critique a little more—it was smart to use a mix of the rice cakes and breadcrumbs to make the binder, the tartar sauce could have used a little bit more of a kick.

 _Yes_ , Will agrees silently. For all his fancy words, Mr. Dimmond’s food is _bland_.

Dimmond’s charity is an organization that translates foreign poetry into English and disseminates it to the public for free. Will can tell Hannibal is quite impressed, especially when Dimmond mentions that he himself has done a lot of work on Dante’s _Paradiso_. Dimmond looks over at Hannibal with a shine in his eye.

Then finally, it is time for Hannibal to present.

“Judges.” He nods to them. “Today I have made for you a baked, breaded sardine on a bed of blanched wax beans, with a white wine, dulse, cream sauce. Please, _bon apetit._ ”

Will cuts into the fish carefully. He stacks it on his fork with a piece of wax bean, and coats in in the sauce. Then, he puts the whole bite in his mouth.

He really, _really_ , wishes he could hate it.

“…It’s delicious.”

“It _really_ is,” Alana gushes. “This—your flavors are _so_ well-balanced. I’m getting the dulse, I’m getting the wine, the lemon…”

“I’m actually looking for something _not_ to like about this dish,” Chilton says, and he looks quite put-out at being robbed of his favorite pastime.

And Hannibal takes their praise with good grace, but he’s keeping his attention largely on Will.

Will sighs. “The fish is cooked really well. Good job, Dr. Lecter.”

“Thank you, Will,” Hannibal says, graciously.

“Oh!” says Price. “First-name basis! That’s quite bold, Dr. Lecter!”

Hannibal smiles. “Will and I have actually met before, a few years ago now. He was—” _dragging a body through the woods_ “—investigating a series of crimes for his latest book, I believe, when he ran into me—” _similarly dragging a body, though missing more organs than Will’s_ “—on the tail-end of a shopping trip. I believe we had somewhat of a show-stopping quarrel, and I offered to make him a meal to… make up for the incident.”

“That sounds almost like the beginning of a romance novel!” Price exclaims, grinning. “Now Will, what did you say in response?”

“I said _no_ , obviously,” Will replies. He’d had far too much to do to consider stopping to have a meal with the Chesapeake Ripper—tableaus to make, evidence to destroy, a car to dispose of… really, just not a great time. The following week, though… “So, here we are now.”

“Yes,” Hannibal says, eyes sparkling, “here we are.” As if he hadn’t been on the phone with Will at an ungodly hour this morning, pretending that he was in a later time zone, wishing his lover a good day and never once thinking to mention he would see him in just a couple of hours.

“Well, I bet you’re regretting not taking him up on the offer now, Will! So, Doctor, what charity are you here playing for?”

“The Baltimore Humane Society.”

Will pauses with his fork on his way to his mouth, blinking at Hannibal with wide eyes.

“Oh, a big fan of animals?” Price asks, and Hannibal tilts his head.

“I was ambivalent of animals growing up. I’ve never had a pet, personally, but if things go well in the coming days, I stand to acquire a vested interest in the upkeep of several dogs. So it seems like a nice gesture.”

Price raises his eyebrows. “‘Acquire a vested interest in several dogs’? Should we assume these dogs are coming along with some special _person?_ ”

Hannibal smiles. “Well, we shall see how the chips fall.”

“Well, we certainly wish you all the luck with that! But for right now, home cooks, it’s time for the judges to discuss and decide who will win the round, and who’s dish will be… on the _chopping block._ ”

Watching the contestants file off into the back room, Will feels like it is very much _his head_ on the chopping block, and his fights the urge to bury his face in his hands. Of all the words he ever expected Hannibal to make him eat, he never thought a drunken declaration of _I will only marry you if you win something on the Food Network!_ was going to break even the top _twenty._ But…. Here they are.

Will eats another wax bean with dulse, white wine, cream sauce.

_Fuck him._

**Author's Note:**

> The fic title is from "Sweeney Todd." Also, coincidentally, an "angler's priest" is a little bat-like thing that fishermen use to kill fish quickly after they're caught so they don't suffer. I made an unintentional play-on words, so thank you internet for helping me realize it. Hope you enjoyed!


End file.
